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Maxx

Abbey's a scooter too, but when we've taken her in, her glands are full. Sometimes though, she'll continue to scoot afterwards.
SM drives me insane! icon_yikes There are so many symptoms that could be attributed to so many things!

Rory rolls, too, but I don't know if this is an SM symptom or not. He seems to be happy when he does it and it seems more like a playful thing to me.

he's so far not exhibiting pain more than the occasional yelp. sometimes he bites as his knees/groin area, but then againn he's a boy... so i usually just assume he's cleaning himself. but this morning i noticed that he was actually biting at his knee... ugh.

Jen - remember way back in Feb when you PM'd me about Abbey yelping and whipping around at her backend like Rory did as a puppy??? Maybe it's all SM...

Maxx's mum -- I'm glad to hear you've had such good results w/ the furosemide. Given that rory's symptoms seem pretty mild cmpared to so many of the other dogs on the chiari list, i am thinking this may be a better route for him than surgery at this point. then if it continues to progress even w/ the drugs, consider surgery.

I am, of course, jumping the gun - as everyone likes to point out. we'll know for sure what the diagnosis is on Friday.

Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.
--Roger Caras

Geoff Skerritt firmly believes the frusemide halts and sometimes reverses syrinx development in most cases, not all. He has been using it for years I think. Lots of other neuros/vets seem sceptical 'in theory' but I too think it seems to halt scratching and therefore must be doing something. There are a couple of AC list people who say they have seen distinct results. It has so few side effects that it is worth using I think. But be aware there may be some initial accidents -- they build up a lot of urine in the 60-90 minutes after taking it so don't give right before bedtime and be sure you can get them out for a walk, ideall one at aroun 60-90 min. and another wee maybe an hour or two after that. Leo has wet himself a few times at the start; he just didn;t seem aware that he was leaking, poor little man.

Leo only gets 10mg; he weighs only 7 kg/15.4lbs. The dosage is based on weight. I think 1mg per kilo or 2 lbs.

The rolling and face rubbing is normal behaviour. It's when they do it because of face irritation/pain that it is a problem. Leo rubs his face but it doesn;t seem to have any connection to pain; he's quite cheerful when he's doing this. They both writhe all around on their backs when they are in a good mood! Clare does acknowledge hard face rubbing as a symptom.

SM

Yup, she still does that--she'll whip around and look at her butt, then sit and chew on her knee. Her yelping is the least of her symptoms, she's only done that a few times. Considering this, we'll probably opt for meds at this point as well.
We never really paid attention to her rolling around, sometimes it looks like play, but then we started to realize that she's started to do it only in the mornings---like how Rory scratches in the mornings.
We've been keeping a journal of her behaviors, and what we thought were random issues seem to be happening more frequently.

Seriously, if her MRI shows nothing, I'll be the one needing meds! icon_yikes This is all making me nuts!

Rory's Mum, to be honest I am not a surgery person. It seems to me that a lot of dogs that I have heard about are still getting a lot of symptoms / pain after surgery. My Vet tends to agree with me too but it is of course a personal choice.

I shouldn't worry too much about the rolling around rubbing their backs - just about every farm animal I have ever seen will do it too and have been doing it no doubt for centuries. it is apparently a behaviour that goes back to when animals were wild - they rolled around (especially after a meal) in dust or grass to remove traces of food from their coats.

Karlin, Maxx is 14.3kg and has 20mg of Frusemide - apparently this is the dose that Mr Skerritt advised James to put him on. So far we haven't had any accidents and as I mentioned earlier he has his dose around 5pm as I know I (or someone else) will definitely be home after that to let him out.

I can't stress enough how well he is doing on it He does still scratch but he no longer yelps and moans Besides, when you think about it, it's quite normal to have an itch and scratch sometimes LOL It does seem to be different scratching to the SM scratching as well - more 'normal' if you like

Jen, have you spoken to your Vet about the morning rolling etc? I know I haven't seen Abbey but it does sound like it could be normal behaviour. You know like we have a shower etc, she could be rolling around to 'clean' her coat. I've known lots of dogs do this in the mornings and after meals and most aren't Cavaliers. This is only my theory though LOL

Abbey

The rolling around is more like she rolls from side to side smooshing her face into the rug. When she's done she looks like Don King, her bangs are a mess!
It seems she's concentrating more on her face than on her back. She also rubs her face on the furniture too. I just think it's odd that she just started the rolling thing in the mornings. I haven't mentioned it to our vet but plan to. He knows she rubs on the furniture and grass though.

Jaspar looks like this all the time right now. He is in the midst of losing his puppy coat and has all this long wispy hair on top of his head. half the time it all stands on end looking like a combover in the wind. Leo's tri coat seems to come in gradually and the changeover isn't very noticeable, but Jaspar has all this wispy long puffy hair then the coarser adult hair down his back. I don;t know how long this will go on for but he really looks raggedy.